Mayor Rob Ford says he did nothing wrong and got no preferential treatment when he asked city officials to approve repairs near his family company.

A work crew, contracted to the city, in August made repairs to the road outside Deco Packaging, the Ford's family business, after Mayor Rob Ford met with senior city officials. Ford said Friday he did nothing wrong.

By:Daniel DaleUrban Affairs Reporter, Published on Fri Sep 21 2012

Mayor Rob Ford says he did nothing wrong and got no preferential treatment when he personally asked city officials to approve drainage and road repairs outside his family company’s building before its 50th anniversary party in August.

Ford, speaking to reporters in Nathan Phillips Square on Friday afternoon, refused to answer repeated questions on his use of his office staff and city resources for his football teams. But he responded heatedly to the suggestion that someone else from the company, Deco Labels and Tags, should have made the repairs request to the city.

“You know what? Then they’ll be saying that we’re hiding behind someone at Deco. I have nothing to hide,” he said.

Ford is known for helping residents deal with even the most minor of local problems. He told reporters Friday that he has made “thousands” of similar repairs requests on behalf of homeowners and other businesses.

“Someone has a pothole in front of their house, in front of their business, I go out and fix it. Just like I did for our company,” he said, wearing a retro Canada hockey jersey after an event honouring players from the 1972 Summit Series team.

“What is the prudent thing to do when you’re hosting a party — you want someone to twist their ankle on a city road? No. Because then (the city would) be sued,” he said. “So we didn’t get anything done out of taxpayers money — the taxpayers had to pay, obviously, to fix the road, but that had to be done anyways. And when you’re hosting a party, that’s the prudent thing to do: you don’t let someone twist an ankle when you know you’re hosting hundreds of people. So that’s the bottom line.”

Ford claimed that Deco had been waiting “three to four years” for the repairs on Greensboro Dr. in Etobicoke. But acting general manager of transportation John Mende said the city promptly dealt with a lone Greensboro pothole request in 2008 and has no records of any request for repair work since then.

The project requested by Ford involved repairs to potholes but also to drainage culverts and ditches. It cost the city between $7,000 and $10,000, about a third of which was for the potholes, Mende said. Mende, too, said Ford was not given special treatment.

But Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the public works committee chair and a key ally, said on CBC Radio on Friday morning that Ford should “smarten up.” He did not change his tune when told of Ford’s afternoon explanation.

“I would’ve approached it differently, and hopefully the next time this occurs, the mayor will approach it differently,” he said in an interview.

As Ford walked back into City Hall, he silently ignored questions on the role of his staff members in his football programs and the reason a young aide attended a practice in a city car while Ford himself was in Chicago on a business trip.

Prodded to respond to the football-related criticism he is facing, he said only, “I’ve responded to that already. I’ve made it quite clear.” But he has never said what the staffers do for his teams, how much time they spend on football, or why he thinks it is appropriate for them to be involved in work not related to his job as mayor.

Asked whether he understands that the “optics” surrounding the repairs request are poor, he said, “There’s no optics! There is no optics.”

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